


alone and together

by symmetricdnp



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2010, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Vacation, like a paragraph of nondescriptive smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 00:25:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14988761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/symmetricdnp/pseuds/symmetricdnp
Summary: He’s teasing and daring and keeps making Phil’s heart flutter, and—maybe this is just what Dan’s like when he’s happy, actually. Phil’s seen it countless times behind closed doors, but never in public.Dan and Phil go to Blackpool.





	alone and together

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "dnp on holiday".

It wasn’t really about the place, anyway.

They’d wanted to go to Portugal, of course they had. They’d spent hours on Skype together researching places to go and things they could do there. Phil remembers it feeling oddly surreal, planning a private holiday in another country with his boyfriend. He’d never felt more out of his element in his life. He’d wondered how old he’d have to be before it stopped feeling like he was playing at being an adult.

So they’d been disappointed when the flight got cancelled. But they’d bounced back quickly, and within days had settled on Blackpool instead. The train had been cheap and a nice hotel had a room open and there was Pleasure Beach, which meant they'd had some justification for going. It'd been a reason they could tell to their parents. Phil’s still not sure if his have picked up on what’s happening between him and Dan yet, and he doesn’t think he’d be ready for that conversation if they haven’t. He used to think they knew since the beginning—it was painfully obvious, he’d thought—but sometimes they say things that make him wonder.

The important part was that it was somewhere with Dan, Dan and preferably a comfortable bed with no threat of being overheard, but nobody besides the two of them needed to know that.

***

“We specifically wanted somewhere sunny, you know,” Phil says, looking out at the drab grey horizon.

Phil’s not sure why he keeps making these sorts of jabs at the place. It’s nice enough. The beaches are pretty in spite of the weather, the architecture makes for a pleasant walk around, and perhaps best of all, there’s people with dogs everywhere. There’s people with dogs back at home too, but it’s different, somehow. Dan keeps stopping to say hello to them and make funny faces, only to look abruptly embarrassed if the owners catch him. Phil can’t stop laughing.

Something about this holiday has brought a part of Dan out. He’s carefree and airy, almost juvenile in a way he often isn’t. There’s a sense of confidence about him, Phil thinks, one that seems to be keeping him away from all the second-guessing he usually falls prey to. He’s teasing and daring and keeps making Phil’s heart flutter, and—maybe this is just what Dan’s like when he’s happy, actually. Phil’s seen it countless times behind closed doors, but never in public.

Dan’s making little complaints too, but that’s just Dan. If Phil didn’t get Dan’s sense of humor by now, he would’ve been hurt countless times. Even with all his experience with it, it can still be tough. Dan can be so unpredictable that Phil can’t always assume a joke is just a joke. But Dan’s volatile moods are absent thus far. He doesn’t even snark back at Phil’s grumbling. He rolls his eyes and knocks Phil’s shoulder with his, lingering and so gentle that it makes Phil’s face heat.

“Stop complaining about the weather like an old man. We’re enjoying ourselves, yeah?”

Phil finds himself unable to do anything but nod.

***

Pleasure Beach is hectic and loud, and Phil can’t remember the last time he let himself have fun like this.

He’s thrumming with it. It feels nice, even with the constant ache in his cheeks from smiling too much. He’s demanding, almost greedy in his quest for thrills, dragging Dan from attraction to attraction with no care for anything else. Dan just lets himself be lead along, and Phil trusts him to speak up if he’s not enjoying himself. He’s pretty sure he is. Any time Phil looks over, Dan’s already got his eyes on him, smiling at Phil with a warmth that makes his stomach squirm.

At one point both of them are doubling over laughing, and Dan slings an arm over Phil’s shoulder. It shocks Phil, and he instinctually stiffens. He can feel the warmth of Dan’s hand through the fabric of his shirt, can smell the shampoo that Dan uses, and suddenly this is much, much too intimate to be showing to strangers.

Except everyone else keeps walking by without sparing them a second glance, and Phil realizes how utterly uninteresting this must look. They’re just a pair of young friends, messing around and having fun on the beach. 

He wonders what these other people think of them, if they think of them at all. Maybe people think they’re friends from uni. Or maybe friends since childhood, so familiar with each other they’re practically brothers. People have even asked that before. There was a waiter once, a worker at a bakery, a stranger they’d been making small talk with. They’d asked if they were brothers, because they’re both tall and have similar haircuts and apparently no other explanation for their closeness crosses people’s minds.

It makes them laugh. Those sorts of assumptions are a relief, in a way, because it means the wrong type of people probably aren’t going to notice and bother them. It puts Phil at ease.

But now, something sits heavy and sour and wrong in Phil’s gut. He feels a strange clawing of something that he recognizes as possessiveness, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. He could do something risky like take Dan’s hand in his, or even give him a quick peck on the cheek, but he doesn't want that. Neither of them do. They don’t want that kind of scrutiny, that specific type of judgement.

But for a moment that Phil can’t really explain, he wishes more than anything for just one stranger in the crowd to read between the lines and realize how much Dan means to him.

***

The hotel isn’t as classy as the pictures, and the rooms are surprisingly close together. There’s almost always someone out in the hallway. The best they can hope for is to avoid awkward eye contact when they open the door.

Still, it’s theirs, and there’s no parents around, and Phil tries not to feel too bad for all the laundry they’re using.

“Doesn’t it feel like we should be doing something special?” Phil mumbles into Dan’s ear from behind. Dan’s fresh out of the shower and looking out the window at the moon. Phil’s arms are wrapped around Dan’s middle, drops of water Dan missed with his towel soaking into the pyjamas Phil’s still wearing.

“What d’you mean?” Dan asks. He tries to look back at Phil, but Phil’s face is resting on his shoulder and it blocks him.

“I dunno, just. We’re not gonna get this sort of privacy for awhile. Feels like we should try something new.”

Then Dan gets this look on his face and pushes Phil back towards the bed. They whisper filthy things to each other for awhile, growing increasingly heated as Phil discovers Dan actually gets flustered when he gets his own late night Skype confessions of fantasies repeated back to him. But ultimately, what they do is nothing new or special. It really, really isn’t.

Yet Phil has his arm thrown over his eyes, pressing down hard as if that could block out how overwhelmingly exposed he feels. He’s got his mouth squeezed shut, afraid that he’d otherwise blurt out all the embarrassingly emotional sentiments bouncing around his mind. He feels guilty that Dan’s having to do all the work. But when Dan pulls his arm away and makes Phil watch as he sinks down, Phil starts making these soft, almost delicate sort of noises that he’s sure he’s never made before in his life. And he just—can’t. 

He doesn’t know how to deal with this, doesn’t know how to get a grip on himself. So he doesn’t. He just looks up at Dan helplessly as Dan works them both through it, and in the end he does ramble out some things he probably would’ve cringed at just an hour ago. But somehow, he doesn’t regret it. He might even be glad for it. 

Maybe it’s the way Dan’s stroking through his hair and giggling a little as he presses chaste kisses to Phil’s jaw. Maybe it’s how Dan’s whispering _I know_ and _me too_ into the crook of Phil’s neck. Maybe it’s because he can’t remember a time before Dan when someone touched him and he felt precious. 

It all kind of makes him want to tell Dan his everything, just to show how much he trusts that Dan won’t hurt him.

***

“Let me take a picture,” Phil says.

“You really do have some sort of weird thing for photos, don’t you? I’m just counting the days until you beg me to make a sex tape.”

“Shut up,” Phil huffs out with a laugh. He steps closer to—he doesn’t know, push him or poke him, but something stops him. He end up just crowding Dan closer to the bench behind him, making Dan’s eyes widen slightly and Phil’s breath catch in his throat.

“I… uh,” he says eloquently before taking a step back. “You’re just. Pretty. And like, the view, and… all.”

He expects Dan to say something biting and sarcastic, but Dan just mumbles a soft, “Okay.”

Dan brings the ice cream he has up to his mouth and sticks his tongue out, a pose he probably intends to be ironic. Phil holds the camera up and looks through the viewfinder. Time seems to slow to a crawl for a moment.

Dan looks awkward and a bit out of place. His fringe falls a tad too long, covering one of his eyes, and his free hand is clenched in front of him as if he doesn’t know what to do with it. The overcast sky doesn’t make for great lighting and there’s a few shadows that fall unflatteringly on his face. He looks not a day over his age, and it makes Phil realize just how young both of them are. He’s never been more tempted to step forward and kiss him.

“I love you,” he says as he releases the shutter, mindful of not ruining Dan’s pose.

“Phil!” Dan complains, flinching as expected. 

But apparently he doesn’t have anything more than that, doesn’t have any sort of lecture for Phil about embarrassing him in public. He looks down at the ground with a pout on his face and colors so subtly Phil probably wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t so familiar with it.

“Let’s just go to the aquarium,” Dan says quietly. He starts walking and Phil has to jog a little to catch up, heart hammering in his chest.

He knows it won’t always feel like this. He’s sure in a couple years, things that make butterflies erupt in his stomach will feel old and familiar. He’ll stop getting randomly lost in his thoughts about how happy he is to have met Dan. The thrill of something new and exciting will fade over time.

Oddly, it doesn’t discourage him. Instead, he wonders what it means that he’s thinking in a scale of years so casually. He wonders what it means that he’s assuming a future together as if it’s a certainty. 

He wonders if it’s significant that he finds himself associating _Dan_ and _forever_ in his mind sometimes and the thought isn’t a scary one at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are always appreciated. You can reblog on tumblr [here](http://www.symmetricdnp.tumblr.com/post/175076920814/) if you want.
> 
> There’s really not a whole lot of info on their Blackpool trip besides some mildly cryptic tweets (Phil wtf does “this bedroom is a volcano” mean), but if I still managed to contradict something… uh surprise, it’s an AU!


End file.
